NHL players jump on board with ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

If you follow Twitter you’ve probably noticed a lot of NHL players dumping buckets of ice water over their heads this summer.

The growing number of ice-bucket videos includes ones from Canadiens prospects Nathan Beaulieu and Dustin Tokarski as well as Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper.

It’s a fun stunt for a serious cause–promoting awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease for which there is no cure.

People post videos of themselves dumping ice water over their head and challenge others to do the same. Those that decline are encouraged to donate to an ALS charity.

Unrestricted free agent Paul Bissonnette, who tweets under the name @BizNasty2point0, promised to post a video today. He offered an intriguing hint on Monday with a photo of a helicopter dumping water on a person standing on a mountain: Tweeted Bissionnette: “I was nominated by Keith Yandle for the #ALSIceBucketChallenge. So we went next level. Video will be posted (Tuesday).”

Bissonnette tweeted the video on Tuesday morning and it’s unique. You can watch it here.

The ALS Ice BucketChallenge has gone viral sparked by 29-year-old Peter Frates who suffers from the disease. Frates, who lives in a Boston suburb with his wife Julie, played hockey, baseball and football in high school and was captain of his baseball team at Boston College. He is confined to a wheelchair now and can no longer speak.

The idea for the ice bucket challenge came from a young man in New York state who also has ALS, Peter’s father John told The Gazette on Monday.

“And once Pete got a hold of it, he’s really the spark that has created this virtual ice storm across the country because Pete is so well known, especially in Boston with a lot of pro athletes because of his athletic career,” Frates said.

John Frates credits two professional athletes for the challenge reaching a wide audience: Boston Bruins forward Gregory Campbell and New England Patriots’ wide receiver Julian Edelman.

The ALS Association’s national office in the United States has seen a huge spike in donations with the Ice Bucket Challenge. Donations jumped from $22,000 to $1.35 million from July 29 to Aug. 11 compared to the same 14-day stretch last year.

On an unrelated hockey note, the Michel Therrien Invitational was held Tuesday at Le Mirage golf club in Terrebonne near Montreal. Canadiens defenceman P.K. Subban and forward Lars Eller were at the tournament along with Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin and assistant coach Jean-Jacques Daigneault. Other familiar faces at the golf club were Hall of Fame goaltender Patrick Roy, now head coach of the Colorado Avalanche, and former Canadiens’ assistant coach Gerard Gallant who was hired as the Florida Panthers head coach in June. You can watch what Subban had to say here:

I thought the same with Nathan’s ‘ice bucket’. The act of dumping a few ice cubes in a bucket of water doesn’t make it an ice bucket. Leave it in there for five minutes or so, let the ice do its thing, don’t immediately dump it over your head.